Even with burnout, overwhelm, budget cuts, hiring freezes, waves of redundancies and everything else in 2024, there’s still little regulation in the US to stop employers tapping workers to respond to requests either at their desk or through their smartphones and laptops at home.

(Of course, France is showing us all up, having introduced a right-to-disconnect policy back in 2017. Those pesky, utterly correct French…)

This week, California State Assemblyman Matt Haney introduced AB 2751, a “right to disconnect” proposition. If passed, it would make every California employer lay out exactly what a person’s hours are and ensure they aren’t required to respond to work-related communications while off the clock. Time periods in which a salaried employee might have to work longer hours would need to be laid out in their contract.

“I do think it’s fitting that California, which has created many of these technologies, is also the state that introduces how we make it sustainable and update our protections for the times we live in and the world we’ve created,” Haney told The San Francisco Standard.

He’s not wrong: California is the birthplace of Gmail, the iPhone, although not Slack — watch out Vancouver, Canada.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

HP Spectre x360 14 review

Tesla sees EV deliveries drop year-over-year for the first time since 2020

England’s NHS will provide artificial pancreas to thousands of diabetes patients

X names its third head of safety in less than two years

​​You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!

Form’s next-gen goggles make for a more comfortable swim

Smart Swim 2 is smaller, lighter and more useful.

Engadget

Form launched its Smart Swim goggles in 2019. They featured a built-in display showing real-time data when you swim, and its successor, the Smart Swim 2, is a refinement in every way. Form has nipped and tucked the existing model, with the tech pack 15 percent smaller than its predecessor. It also worked on comfort and fit, giving the goggles longer, more adjustable straps and a broader range of swappable nose bridges.

Continue reading.

Amazon just walked out on its self-checkout technology

The company is removing Just Walk Out from Fresh grocery stores in the US.

Amazon

Amazon is removing its much-trumpeted Just Walk Out tech from all of its US Fresh grocery stores. The self-checkout system used cameras, sensors and good old-fashioned human eyeballs to track what people leave the store with, charging the customers accordingly with no human needing to scan a thing.

One issue was the system didn’t use AI object detection and advanced smarts as much as Amazon would like you to believe. There are reportedly over 1,000 people in India scanning the camera feeds to ensure accurate checkouts.

Amazon tried to sell the technology to other retail chains, but its only major deal was with Starbucks in a few locations. These systems require high ceilings to accommodate the cameras and sensors. Reuters suggested many retailers consider Amazon a competitor and didn’t want its hooks in their systems. For now, the systems will continue in select UK stores.

Continue reading.

Even with burnout, overwhelm, budget cuts, hiring freezes, waves of redundancies and everything else in 2024, there’s still little regulation in the US to stop employers tapping workers to respond to requests either at their desk or through their smartphones and laptops at home.

(Of course, France is showing us all up, having introduced a right-to-disconnect policy back in 2017. Those pesky, utterly correct French…)

This week, California State Assemblyman Matt Haney introduced AB 2751, a “right to disconnect” proposition. If passed, it would make every California employer lay out exactly what a person’s hours are and ensure they aren’t required to respond to work-related communications while off the clock. Time periods in which a salaried employee might have to work longer hours would need to be laid out in their contract.

“I do think it’s fitting that California, which has created many of these technologies, is also the state that introduces how we make it sustainable and update our protections for the times we live in and the world we’ve created,” Haney told The San Francisco Standard.

He’s not wrong: California is the birthplace of Gmail, the iPhone, although not Slack — watch out Vancouver, Canada.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

HP Spectre x360 14 review

Tesla sees EV deliveries drop year-over-year for the first time since 2020

England’s NHS will provide artificial pancreas to thousands of diabetes patients

X names its third head of safety in less than two years

​​You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!

Form’s next-gen goggles make for a more comfortable swim

Smart Swim 2 is smaller, lighter and more useful.

Engadget

Form launched its Smart Swim goggles in 2019. They featured a built-in display showing real-time data when you swim, and its successor, the Smart Swim 2, is a refinement in every way. Form has nipped and tucked the existing model, with the tech pack 15 percent smaller than its predecessor. It also worked on comfort and fit, giving the goggles longer, more adjustable straps and a broader range of swappable nose bridges.

Continue reading.

Amazon just walked out on its self-checkout technology

The company is removing Just Walk Out from Fresh grocery stores in the US.

Amazon

Amazon is removing its much-trumpeted Just Walk Out tech from all of its US Fresh grocery stores. The self-checkout system used cameras, sensors and good old-fashioned human eyeballs to track what people leave the store with, charging the customers accordingly with no human needing to scan a thing.

One issue was the system didn’t use AI object detection and advanced smarts as much as Amazon would like you to believe. There are reportedly over 1,000 people in India scanning the camera feeds to ensure accurate checkouts.

Amazon tried to sell the technology to other retail chains, but its only major deal was with Starbucks in a few locations. These systems require high ceilings to accommodate the cameras and sensors. Reuters suggested many retailers consider Amazon a competitor and didn’t want its hooks in their systems. For now, the systems will continue in select UK stores.

Continue reading.

The Department of Justice and more than a dozen states have filed a lawsuit against Apple in the US federal court, accusing the company of violating antitrust laws. It says Apple’s hardware and software products are largely inaccessible to competitors, making it difficult for rivals to compete and for customers to switch to other companies’ products.

The lawsuit comes after the European Commission fined Apple €1.8 billion ($1.95 billion) for stopping music-streaming developers from “informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available” outside the App Store. And all this while US lawmakers chase another tech company, TikTok, with a lot of enthusiasm.

The DOJ suggests Apple used its control over iOS to block innovative apps and cloud streaming services from the public. (Look at cloud gaming services, like Google’s now-gone Stadia and Microsoft’s xCloud). The suit also suggests Apple has obstructed rival payment platforms, made it harder for Android messages to appear on iPhones and restricted how competing smartphones integrated with iOS devices.

You could compare Apple’s antitrust suit to Microsoft’s antitrust suit brought against Windows in the late ’90s — even Attorney General Merrick Garland noted those in the suit. But Microsoft truly dominated PC software back then, with over 90 percent of all PCs running some flavor of Windows.

The DOJ says Apple claims 70 percent of all smartphones, which is already less. Step outside the US, which is a bit academic here, and Apple has the same market share as Samsung, with many other phone makers jostling for a percentage point or two. It’s not quite the same grip as Microsoft had on PCs.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

Our hilariously timed piece on how the iPhone changed tech overnight

The case against the TikTok ban bill

Samsung’s Music Frame speaker is now available for pre-order for $400

​​You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!

Microsoft’s Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 are not for you

They’re for serious business people and professionals.

Microsoft

Two devices conspicuously missing from Microsoft’s Surface and AI event last fall are finally here — and they’re what we expected and a bit surprising. Today, Microsoft unveiled the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6, sporting the same designs as the previous models but now with the AI smarts of Intel’s new Core Ultra CPU. Alas, both have the foreboding words “for business” attached to their names, so you’ll only be able to buy them from Microsoft’s website or commercial resellers. But why? We don’t really know.

Continue reading.

DoorDash is testing a drone delivery feature in Virginia

It’s in partnership with Alphabet’s Wing.

DoorDash just announced the launch of a new drone delivery pilot program in Christiansburg, Virginia, with an approximate population of 22,000. The company says orders should arrive in 30 minutes or less, making high-flying drones about as fast as a standard pizza delivery. However, it’s limited to only “eligible items.” And, alas, only items from fast-food chain Wendy’s.

Wendy’s? Wendy’s.

Continue reading.

Reddit is now a publicly traded company

The social media stalwart wants to raise around $631 million in its IPO.

Nearly two decades after its debut, Reddit is now a publicly traded company. It was listed on the New York Stock Exchange as RDDT on Thursday, with mascot Snoo on hand to ring the opening bell. One interesting aspect of Reddit going public is it offered shares at the IPO pricing to long-term users of good standing over the last few weeks. It’s not all good news for Reddit, though. It recently signed a deal with Google, reportedly worth $60 million a year, to train the latter’s AI models on user-generated content. The Federal Trade Commission is looking into that arrangement.

Continue reading.